


Patching Up

by sad_ghost_kid



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Dubious Ethics, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Jack has a poor bedside manner, danny is desperate for help, features a plethora of world-building headcanons that i've gathered over the years, fentons want to study phantom but dont want to betray their alliance, ghost science, graphic depictions of injuries, maddie is wary, parent-child bonding, shaky alliance between fentons and phantom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:45:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4770572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sad_ghost_kid/pseuds/sad_ghost_kid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phantom shows up in the Fenton's lab late one night, severely injured and desperate for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patching Up

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! so I'm a bit nervous to post this, as it's really only the second fic i've posted in years. This is from the massive collection of short dp fics i've been working on since last spring. I've been very shy about posting things since my falling out from previous fandoms that i was into in high school, and im hoping that if people really like this, i'll have the courage to post more stories. thank you all!!!

My husband and I had long since agreed that it was best to be out of the lab by midnight, but either one or both of us kept working late more often than I would like to admit. Tonight, some time past one am, Jack and I were still working diligently on our own projects. I nearly jumped when there was a thud at the end of the counter I was working at. Some empty beakers fell over and a splotch of ectoplasm appeared in their place. There was a rapidly growing green puddle on the floor as well. 

I instantly went to reach for a weapon, but stopped when a familiar echoey voice came from the spot at the end of the counter.

“M-Maddie…? Jack?” came the disembodied voice of none other than Phantom.

My husband stepped over beside me, “Ghost kid? What are you doing in our house?” He sounded vaguely defensive and almost angry.

Phantom was sort of our ally. We had realized that, if we let Phantom fight the other ghosts, we had more time for our research and neither Jack or I would get hurt from hunting. We had come to the agreement that we wouldn’t hunt Phantom if he didn’t interfere with our research and continued to keep the other, more blatantly malevolent ghosts at bay. While my husband was more wary of Phantom, I was the one who had extended the alliance, and oddly enough had a very small soft spot for him.

I took a step forward, “Phantom, why are you invisible? What’s wrong?”

Phantom’s voice sounded shaky and actually quite scared, “I-I couldn’t exactly go to a hospital… And I was hoping that our a-alliance--” there was a pause and he coughed. A few more drops of ectoplasm appeared on the floor. “Our alliance would extend to you guys patching me up after a fight once in a while…” The new drops on the linoleum multiplied, and added to the large ectoplasm puddle already there. 

I felt Jack puff up behind me, “That’s not our prob--”

I half turned to face Jack, putting up a hand to shush him. “We’ll help you Phantom. But we’ve seen you hurt before. What’s different this time?”

The ghost kid gave a harsh laugh, “Promise not to puke?”

I nodded, and Phantom became visible. I appreciated Phantom’s remark, as my stomach did a flip at the sight before me. 

To start off, Phantom had a pair of gaping slices in his abdomen. He was hunched over a bit, with his left arm held up in front of the wounds, so I couldn’t really get a good look, but I could tell it was severe. His right arm was limp at his side, due to what appeared to be a broken collarbone, and I noticed that his forearm was also bent slightly in a place it shouldn’t be. There was ectoplasm dribbling from his nose, mouth, and one ear, and his green-tinted skin was pale with a darker bruise-like splotch at his temple. His hair was stained green and his lower half was in the indiscriminate form of a spectral tail. 

He was hovering a few inches over the floor, and his face was pinched up in an expression of sheepishness and pain. (We knew that while most ghosts couldn’t feel pain, Phantom could, or could at least fake it very well.) I also recognized human-like signs that he was close to fainting--granted he was capable of that--such as the fact that his glowing eyes were dilated, his lips were almost as pale as the rest of his face, and sweat was beading at his forehead. 

“Jeezus, ghost kid, you get hit by a bus or something?” questioned Jack, and I noticed Phantom flinch very slightly. 

I reached out to touch Phantom’s right shoulder, but he shrunk away from me, and I recognized a flicker of fear in his eyes. Since the start of our alliance, he was normally somewhat on guard around my husband and I, but this was different. He was afraid, and it wasn’t so much because of us. My curiosity was sparked by this, but I couldn’t exactly interrogate the other half of an alliance, especially since it was such a shaky alliance. 

Phantom gave a small yet dark chuckle before wincing and coughing. More ectoplasm dribbled from his mouth and torso at the agitation. “At this point I’d have rather… gotten hit by a bus.” He was looking everywhere but at Jack and I. “So will you guys help me out... or am I gonna have to go traumatize a bunch of hospital staff?” Somehow, his attempt at humor sounded empty. 

“Sure, but…” Jack started, and I looked at him, seeing the same curiosity in his eyes as was surely in mine. I knew what he was about to ask, and I nodded, letting him know that I wanted to ask it too. “But we want to fully examine you while we patch you up, kid.”

The fear in Phantom’s eyes grew tenfold. He drifted backwards an inch or so, and swallowed hard, looking up at us. He had sunk towards the floor a bit, and had begun to tremble a little. Phantom looked down at his chest and broken arm, before meeting my eyes. I knew defeat when I saw it. 

“A-alright,” he conceded, an expression that I couldn’t quite recognize flashing over his face for a moment. He paused for a moment, exhaling then inhaling deeply and slowly (and I wondered if I would find lungs when I looked into the gashes on his torso). “Where do you want me?” 

Jack moved to the examination table in the middle of the lab and began to clear it off. When we didn’t have any experiments going on involving “live” ghosts, we usually used the table as extra counter space. I helped Jack clear it off, and then disinfected the table. As always, I double checked that the drain at the bottom was clear, while Jack turned on the overhead light and video camera. 

“Hop up here, kid,” instructed Jack as I went to fill a pair of tool trays with first aid and examination supplies. 

When I pushed over the two trays, Phantom was sitting on the table, tail draped over the edge. He looked nervous, and I suddenly recognized the expression he had had a few minutes earlier: it was desperation. And that desperation was what had made him look so afraid when he first showed up here, and had made him agree to our condition to help him. There was a reason Phantom had come to us despite the risk, and I wanted to know what that reason was. 

“Please lay down, Phantom. We need to be able to see your injuries to take care of them.” I almost wanted to put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but then again I was just thinking excitedly to myself about spreading open his wounds to study his insides…

Phantom swallowed hard again and moved to lay down, hovering rather than scooting in order to avoid agitating his wounds further. 

“Does your suit come off, or will we have to use scissors?” asked Jack, and I almost wanted to admonish him for his harshness, but we weren’t about to do something that talking sweetly would alleviate. I felt a semblance of guilt because Phantom already had enough injuries, but my curiosity and this rare chance outweighed that feeling… even if Phantom did feel pain. 

Phantom jerked his left arm up to the collar of his suit, revealing the twin slices for the first time. “I-it comes off,” he stammered, looking desperate again. He pulled on the collar to reveal a well-hidden zipper, and drew it down to his belt, exposing his torso. His legs were still intangible.

I nearly gasped at the sight of green bruises and pale scars among the two fresh gashes, and I looked up at my husband to see my own bewilderment mirrored on his face. Phantom hadn’t come to us because these wounds were a few scratches that needed to be sewn up. He clearly had come because this was way out of his league. 

I glanced at Phantom’s face to find that he was looking off to the side; his expression told me that fear was causing him to fight to stay conscious. For his sake, I hoped he would pass out. 

Jack began examining Phantom’s broken arm (did he even have bones to break?) while I started to clean away the ectoplasm from his chest wounds. I refused to let the ghost kid’s bit-back gasps and whimpers get to me. 

“Mads,” started Jack after a moment, “Phantom really has bones. Ghost cartilage doesn’t break like this, and I can even feel all the individual bones in his wrist. Even that box-obsessed ghost wasn’t this fully developed.”

Phantom glanced at his arm and winced, uttering a curse when Jack prodded at the break. I saw the desperation flicker to frustration, “Yes, I have bones, and that one is--ow!--very broken.” 

Jack didn’t take the hint to reset the arm and be done with it, as my husband was much more interested in studying Phantom than patching him up. I was interested in examining the ghost as well, but I couldn’t forget that he had come to us begging for help (as much as he could with that massive hero complex, at least), and we couldn’t betray our alliance by letting him become our test subject. What that all amounted to was that I had to keep Jack focussed on keeping a balance between harming and healing. 

“Go ahead and fix up his arm, Jack. We can study the tapes later,” I insisted, and my husband nodded, recognizing why he had to move on. 

Phantom reacted badly to my words, however. “Y-you’re recording this?” he gasped, his head jerking up and his eyes searching for the camera. 

His jolt caused my hand, and subsequently the disinfectant wipe I was using, to slip, and isopropyl alcohol got into one of his wounds. He yelped and went very still, save for the persistent trembling. 

“Try not to move too much,” I urged. “But yes, we record all of our instances with ghosts in and out of the lab, for further study and examination.” 

That earned another swear, but the still-there frustration on Phantom’s face dissolved into a screech of agony when Jack, without warning, reset the bone in the ghost’s arm. By the force Jack had to use, it clearly didn’t go back easily. My husband bound the arm in a brace when he was through, and Phantom’s cries ended in whimpers. Phantom soon went completely still and quiet, motionless except for the persistent trembling and occasional twitch; he had slipped into semi-consciousness, his head lolled to the side and eyes half lidded. 

I wanted to frown at Jack for going too far, but I just shook my head. It was for the better that the ghost kid wasn’t really awake to feel me poking around his chest, anyway. 

With much more gentle intent than my husband (he certainly wasn’t the bad guy, we just had different views on Phantom’s affect--Jack thought it was all a pointless sham, while I figured, sham or not, we would get more from Phantom if we treated him like the human he tries to be), I spread open the higher up of the two gashes. It was deep, going straight in between the eighth and ninth ribs. A little prodding around confirmed the presence of said ribs, though I did my best to avoid pressing on any bruises, in case Phantom had a broken rib. Judging by his shallow breathing--which had been consistent through this whole process--he was experiencing chest pain, and I honestly didn’t want to cause greater injury. 

The fact of Phantom’s breathing alone did bewilder me, as we had never before encountered a ghost who did, but we had known about this behavior for a while now, so it wasn’t the most immediate of concerns. “Jack, bring over the x-ray machine. I want to get a picture of his chest.”

“Of course, sweetcheeks.”

While Jack brought over and started up the equipment, I began suturing up the wound I had just been poking at. They had both stopped bleeding (as if Phantom wasn’t strange enough, but his ectoplasm was able to form clots) so I figured it was okay to wait on examining the second slice. 

My husband and I put on some protective gear and took a few x-rays. We got one of Phantom’s full torso--which would help us figure out what to do about his collarbone--then one of each arm, his head, and his spectral tail. We took the last one to see if anything showed up at all, or if it would look like the usual x-rays of ghosts: a thin layer on the outer edge to hold everything in, then a varyingly more dense amount of ectoplasm inside. 

Jack brought up the images on a monitor on the wall while I began to examine the slice in Phantom’s abdomen. This second wound was equally deep as the first, cutting through scar tissue and muscle. It wasn’t so deep, however, to have cut into Phantom’s stomach, granted he had one. 

When I finished stitching, I wrapped his chest in gauze. I moved to the front end of the table, gently parting Phantom’s white hair, so that I could get a good look at the bloodied bump on his head. It looked like a typical blunt force trauma wound, save for the green rather than red blood. I cleaned it gently, before wrapping a few strips of gauze around his head. 

“Maddie, you need to see this,” prompted Jack, and I could tell from his tone that the x-rays had revealed something intriguing. 

However, I was almost finished up with Phantom, “Just a second, dear. I’m almost through.” The bump to Phantom’s head had undoubtedly been severe enough to have caused a concussion, and I wanted to check if he was showing the signs of one. Several of the symptoms he had already shown fit with a concussion, including his semi-conscious state and the ectoplasm that had oozed from his ear, mouth, and nose, but there was one more thing I wanted to check. I turned his head so that he was facing up, and carefully opened his eyes. They were obviously dazed and unfocused, but also unevenly dilated. It was hardly noticeable, but the two black pupils of his glowing green eyes were uneven. Phantom had a concussion and that meant that, somehow, he not only had a brain to injure, but one that was affected by such injury. 

Perplexed, and wondering how Phantom could get any more complex, I turned to where my husband had brought the x-ray images up on a display screen. From the start, I was shocked by how normal the x-rays looked. Phantom had a skull, ribs, everything. Yet, as I had predicted, nothing solid had come up in the x-ray of the ghost’s lower half. 

“What did you find?” I asked as I stepped closer to my husband and the images on display. 

The moment he spoke, I saw what he was seeing. “There’s got to be dozens of healed fractures. Mostly his arms, but his ribs have certainly taken hits. I don’t see anything old on his skull, though.”

“Shit,” I hissed, seeing a very obvious--at least, to the trained eye--plethora of old and new breaks. There were several small white lines in each bone in Phantom’s arms, and a thicker, brighter one in his right arm--the one Jack had just reset. “But we’ve never seen Phantom sporting what could be assumed to be a broken bone for more than a day. If the proof wasn’t right here in front of me, I wouldn’t believe it.”

Jack nodded, “The one to his skull alone should have been enough to, well, kill him. The fact that he was coherently talking to us and was alert with that,” he pointed to the fresh and still unhealed crack on the side of Phantom’s head, “is a feat in and of itself.”

“His pupils are unevenly dilated. Barely, but still,” I commented. The both of us were quite frankly dumbstruck. 

I can’t say I wasn’t relieved to see that the break in Phantom’s collarbone was an aligned fracture, meaning it wouldn’t need to be tampered with or reset. A few of his ribs were sporting hairline fractures in areas that corresponded with dark bruises on his chest, but there wasn’t really much we could do about that. That meant that our immediate use for the x-rays was through. 

I turned around and returned to the examination table. “Jack, I’m pretty sure we’re going to need to patch up his legs. I’m gonna try waking him up. Will you get some more bandages, please?”

“Sure thing.”

Gently, I tapped on Phantom’s cheek, taking a moment to wipe away the green blood that had dribbled from his nose and mouth due to the trauma to his head. “Phantom, wake up. We’re almost done, I just need you to wake up.”

I watched as his eyelids fluttered then opened fully. He was calm for only a moment before he presumably realized where he was; Phantom went rigid and wide-eyed, staring up at me in barely contained panic. I noticed that he was holding his breath.

“Calm down, Phantom,” I urged, “Jack and I are patching you up, remember?”

Phantom let out a sigh, easing somewhat. His breathing was still shallow as it evened out, but it was regular despite the obvious pain. 

“How… how long was I out?” he asked, voice hoarse and still laced with panic. “A-am I…?”

I began cleaning away the ectoplasm that had dripped from his ear (also from the blow to the head). “Not long. I’ve stitched the gashes on your chest, your right arm is reset, and the break in your collarbone doesn’t need to be tampered with. You also have a few hairline fractures on your ribs and your skull is cracked. Quite a rap sheet.”

Phantom let out a slow breath, before giving a small yet rueful chuckle, “Wow. I should’a guessed my head cracked more than just pavement.” 

Jack stepped over to the table, “Kid, you do know that you’ve broken your arms more than a dozen times, right?”

Phantom looked away, “Yeah… it happens.”

“How come we haven’t seen you in a cast yet?” my husband continued. His harshness seemed to have faded after seeing those x-rays. “What do you do when that happens?”

He still wouldn’t meet our eyes, “Do you want the simple version or the long version?”

“The long version, if you don’t mind,” I requested. 

Phantom huffed sharply in a semi laugh. “Of course you do. Well, usually I’m not so busted up. So I reset my own bones, ya know? A little well placed intangibility and I can fix myself right up. Ice to hold everything in place. Helps that I heal ridiculously fast too. Everything is a scar by the end of a week.”

I nodded, “That resilience would explain why you’re not in a coma from that blow to the head you took.”

Phantom began to try to push himself up on the examination table, “Listen, I really should get going….”

Jack placed a hand on Phantom’s shoulder (the not broken one), “We’re not quite done yet, kid. We still need to look at your legs.”

“Plus you’re in no shape to fend for yourself right now.” I played on his sense of humor, “You don’t want to rip your stitches and have all our hard work go to waste, do you?”

Phantom gave a nervous laugh, letting Jack push him back down. “Y-Yeah… my legs… uh… do we have to…?”

This surprised me. Earlier, he had come in practically begging for us to help him and now he was refusing it? This must’ve been what had made him so desperate and scared. “Why wouldn’t we? Your lower half is normally solid, is it not? Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll be able to help.”

Phantom tried sitting up again and I could tell by the wild fear growing in his eyes that he wasn’t going to stay down. I helped him upright as Jack grabbed a sling to immobilize his broken shoulder. Phantom slipped into it gratefully. 

The ghost finally looked me in the eye, and I was caught between seeing his bravery and the youth held in his faintly glowing features. “B-before we do anything else, I need to ask you what you know about the regeneration abilities of ghosts.”

Jack stepped over beside me, “Do you mean healing, or limb regrowth?”

Phantom looked down at his spectral tail for a moment before swallowing hard. “Limb regrowth…”

And suddenly all that desperation and fear made sense. 

I was glad that I was able to smile in reassurance, “Fortunately, we do know some methods of helping with that. You’re going to be okay, Phantom.”

His shoulders sagged in relief at that, and he even managed a small smile. 

“So a ghost’s regeneration abilities rely on the amount of spectral energy said ghost has. If we increase that energy, your regeneration rate will increase,” I explained. 

Phantom processed that for a moment before nodding, “You’ll hook me up to the portal, since it’s pure spectral energy.”

“Bingo,” agreed Jack. He moved to lift Phantom from the examination table--which was met with a surprised yelp--and carry him to the containment chamber beside the portal. I followed closely behind. 

Phantom was soon inside the chamber and hovering slightly, a sight that I had once wished to witness under very different circumstances. Phantom seemed to be thinking something similar, as he eyed the inside of the device and its console with suspicion. But he seemed to be convinced that we were going to help him, which we were, of course. Just the video and x-rays alone would be enough to fuel our research for months, after all.

Jack moved to fidget with the portal controls, harnessing the energy it produced and channeling it over towards the containment chamber. 

“Okay, Phantom. I need you to make your lower half solid,” I instructed. 

“Is this going to be quick?” he asked, “Because I seriously might bleed out.”

I nodded, “Yes. I’ll only leave it on for a few seconds so that we don’t overload your ectoplasmic core. On the count of three, you solidify your legs and I’ll flood the chamber with energy from the portal.”

“Okay,” Phantom swallowed hard, bracing himself with a hand on the inside of the glass. 

“One… two… three.” 

I felt Jack come up beside me when Phantom screamed. It was blood curdling and agonized, at best. It had only been for a moment, but I had seen why Phantom had been worried that he would bleed out: his entire left leg was missing below the knee, like it had been chewed off, and there was a slice in his right leg that looked a little too close for comfort to his femoral artery (granted he had one and it did work).

Jack gripped my shoulder for the three seconds I let the green energy envelop the inside of the containment chamber. No ghost could survive even ten seconds of the pure, unadulterated ectoplasmic energy, but three seconds was plenty enough to rebuild a leg, especially one so developed as Phantom’s. 

Once again, Phantom’s cries dissolved into whimpers, and when the glowing green faded away, Phantom dropped to his knees like he had been released from midair suspension. A quick glance confirmed that yes, his left leg was intact. He was leaning his head against the glass, shaking horribly and gasping. I noticed that his aura was significantly brighter. 

He looked up after a few moments, and his eyes were ablaze--the whites, pupils, and irises of his eyes were completely green, so bright it was almost blinding. “P-please, g-get me o-out of here.”

Jack hurriedly pulled him out, and was about to deposit him on the examination table when Phantom ground out, “N-no, o-open the p-portal. I-I need to--” 

With me for support, we stood Phantom in front of the portal and Jack ran to open it. Feelings of static electricity nipped at my skin where I held onto Phantom, and bright green light was visible beneath his wounds; streaks of it burst from between the stitches in his chest, looking as if they would surely burn through the gauze bandaging there. Phantom felt like ice, and the few seconds it took for Jack to open the portal were much too long. 

The moment the doors cleared, Phantom stumbled forward, and let out another wretched scream, one so loud that Jack and I had to cover our ears. Unlike his previous cries, however, this one produced visible sound waves that poured from Phantom’s mouth and transferred through the portal to the Ghost Zone. I was awestruck by the raw power being unleashed. It lasted no more than four or five seconds, and when it was over, Phantom fell back. 

Jack and I caught him with ease, surprised to see the ectoplasm practically pouring out of Phantom’s mouth. It looked almost as if he had taken a gulp of water, then opened his mouth and let it pour out. His eyes were back to normal, despite having gone half lidded, and his ear was bleeding again, but his legs were solid and intact. His breathing was labored and he was shaking as we helped him up onto the examination table; I wiped his mouth with a cloth. 

When Phantom finally caught his breath after several minutes, I commented, “Your legs look fully healed. How’s the rest of your body?”

“T-the same as before. I was so focused on my legs that I wasn’t able to use that energy for anything else... There was just too much of it built up inside me. It felt like when… it f-felt like--” his voice got shaky and cut off for a moment. He continued, but with something that I don’t think was what he was originally going to say “Like being struck by lightning… I had to get rid of it with my ghostly wail.”

Jack and I just nodded, not sure how to reply. 

It was quiet for a moment before I spoke up, “Well, we’ve done all we could to patch you up. I suggest you rest for a while, and if you want to stay here that’s fine. We can get you a pillow and blanket.”

Phantom sat up and gave a small laugh, as well as what could easily have been a genuine smile. “That’s alright. I have somewhere I can go for the night. Thank you both so much.”

“Of course,” smiled Jack. 

With that, Phantom lifted off of the examination table and drifted up towards the ceiling. He gave a short wave, then disappeared. 

“Let’s get to bed, sweetcheeks,” urged Jack around a yawn. 

“Yes let’s. We can clean up and study the tapes and those x-rays tomorrow,” I agreed, turning towards the stairs. I was very glad we had forged an alliance with Phantom--it seemed we really could get along, as well as get help from each other.


End file.
